'I want to love you but I better not ouch (don’t touch).
'I want to hold you but my senses tell me to stop.
'I want to kiss you but I want it too much (too much).
'I want to taste you but your lips are venomous poison…'

-Poison by Alice Cooper

-Evan-

"Good God," Evan croaked, groping for the water bottle without taking his eyes off the computer monitor as he scrolled through the images that Madison had sent him. He’d always known that Madison was a one of the hottest women he’d ever met. With her golden blonde hair and deep violet eyes and her kick-‘em-in-the-balls body, there wasn’t a question about it. What he hadn’t bargained for, exactly, was the shock to his senses at seeing the stoic Valerie Denning devoid of her boxy, frumpy business suit and in, well, nothing . . .

Madison giggled as she rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin on her hand and kicking her feet idly in the air. “I told you she’s hot,” she remarked mildly.

Wincing as the sharp pang of need shot through him again, Evan sighed. Damn it, he’d just gotten done balling Madison, and he was already hard again? ‘Fuck . . .’ Swallowing hard as he stared at a picture of Valerie, spread eagle in the middle of a thick white fur throw rug, he downed the contents of the water bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He’d thought she’d have a nice body under that bullshit business suit she’d worn, but damn it . . .

Long legs—shockingly long legs . . . perfectly toned thighs . . . a tiny waist . . . breasts that he wanted to titty-fuck . . . Her hair fanned out around her, her eyes were half-closed. Cheeks tinted with a drunken flush, she looked like she was waiting for him to—

“Hard? Just from those pictures?” Madison teased. From her position on the floor, she could easily see under his desk, and he spared a glance at her only to find her staring at his erection with unmasked amusement.

“You fucked her, didn’t you?” he asked, ignoring her observation.

Madison sighed and pushed herself off the floor as she reached for the blouse that he’d tossed aside. “No, I told you. I didn’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

She laughed at his surly question. “Because, you idiot, I happen to like penises, for starters.”

He snorted and clicked the ‘next’ button. Same position but she had her knees bent demurely to the side, her pussy lost in shadows, her arms crossed under her very generous breasts, squeezing them together as she pouted prettily at the camera. “For starters?”

The soft clink of her decorative belt punctuated her movements. “And she’s engaged.”

“She’s what?” he hissed, his gaze flashing away from the monitor to Madison’s face, scanning her features for a hint of a lie.

“Engaged,” Madison replied, completely nonplussed.

“Well, fuck-fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck,” Evan mumbled, flopping back in the chair and shaking his head as he idly stroked his cock. “What’d she go and do a hella stupid thing like that for?”

“If it makes you feel any better, she doesn’t love him—” Cutting herself off abruptly, Madison shook her head and shrugged before she continued her slow work of getting dressed. “At least, she doesn’t love him like she should. I have very little doubt in my mind that she loves him in a . . . platonic sort of way, but . . . well . . . She says he’s dependable, which is a great, big fucking laugh and a half. Little troll . . .”

He grunted something entirely unintelligible as he clicked through the pictures again. Leaning back in his chair with a half-sigh, half-moan, he looked entirely discomfited—an expression that Madison certainly did not miss. “What a waste of a damn fine pussy,” he muttered, leaning forward and moving the trackball to close out the image files.

“Wait,” she blurted, drawing his attention away from what he’d planned to do. “Weren’t you listening to me?”

Rolling his eyes—he really was irritated, wasn’t he?—he shook his head slowly. “Damn it, yes, I was listening to you. She’s fucking engaged to a fucking troll and is going to spend the rest of her natural born life ruing the day that she went and did something so hella-fucking-dumb.”

“Careful, Evan . . . you’re sounding smarter than you like to,” she couldn’t resist pointing out with a wink.

Evan snorted and shook his head again. “All right,” he relented with a long-suffering sigh. “What did I miss?”

Madison chuckled. “She doesn’t love him in a romantic sense, even if she does say otherwise. Don’t you think it’d be a shame if she wasted her life with a man that she doesn’t love?”

Sapphire blue eyes narrowed dangerously, and Madison had to bite back a laugh. He was onto her, but then, she hadn’t really thought it’d take him too long to connect the dots . . . Evan Roka Zelig was nobody’s fool, after all . . . “I get the feeling I’m not going to like where you’re going with this,” he drawled.

Her immediate answer was a husky laugh.

He groaned. “Maddy—”

She held up a hand to cut him off. “She needs to learn that there is more to life than feeling comfortable with a little dickweed like him . . . and you, Evan Zelig, are the man to do it.”

His reply wasn’t entirely expected. Instead of the flaring eyes and the absolute indignity of his rebuttal that she’d actually expected, the man let his head fall back as a deep swell of his rich laughter filled the air instead. She didn’t say a thing as he continued to laugh, and she wasn’t entirely surprised when the amusement slowly wound down. When he finally managed to squelch the sound though the grin remained, he lowered his chin and stared at her. “That’s cute, Maddikins. For a second there, I could have sworn you said that you thought that I was the man to do it.”

She didn’t blink. “I did.”

This time, his eyes did flare wide, and he shook his head as he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times as the power of words failed him. “Aha . . . no fucking way,” he stated flatly in a tone that left no room for argument.

“Oh, come on, Evan! Think of it as your good deed for . . . a few years—maybe fifty . . .”

“Cain would fucking rip my damn balls off,” he intoned, slumping lower in his chair with his head propped on the back of it. “Don’t mess around with another man’s mate . . . remember?”

“If you say that too loudly, then other people are going to hear you, and they’ll know that you actually do possess some morals,” Madison remarked. “That aside, since when have you cared what your father would say?”

“I don’t,” he argued, staring at the ceiling. “He can suck my left nut.”

Madison’s lip twitched as she tried not to smile. He liked to talk big, she knew. She also knew that the subject of his father was a sore spot for him. “I’m not asking you to make her your mate, you know. Just show her that there’s more to life than her stuffy, boring fiancé.”

“Maddy . . . in case you weren’t paying attention . . . she hates me—loathes me. I actually think she wants me to die. That woman would dance at my funeral and piss on my grave—and while the chase might be fun enough, if you actually think that I have the time or inclination to—”

“Another deal.”

He blinked and shifted his gaze to the side, staring at her for a moment though he stubbornly refused to turn his head toward her. “Another deal?” He sighed. “What?”

“I have another picture,” she drawled quietly. “One I didn’t send you—yet.”

Evan heaved a sigh and shook his head. “Ain’t no picture worth the seven kinds of hell ol’ Cain’d bring down on me,” he predicted.

“So you say; so you say . . . this one is definitely worth it.”

He didn’t answer out loud, but he did grin just a little.

“It’ll make you come.”

That got his attention fast enough. Sitting up straight, he leveled a look at Madison and laughed. “I haven’t come without a pair of lips or a pussy wrapped around me in . . . hell, in years,” he reminded her. “Not even a damn wet dream.”

Madison laughed, mostly because she knew damn well that the picture in question was much hotter than the actuality of the situation at the time. In reality, they’d been watching a movie—damned if Madison could remember what one—and Valerie had been sitting between Madison’s legs while Madison brushed her hair—Valerie was a sucker for that. Madison had commented on how soft Valerie’s hair was, and Valerie had giggled, turned, and given her a quick kiss on the lips—the friendly kind, nothing more. That the phone had been set to take a picture hadn’t been more than coincidence, and that they’d both been naked at the time? Well, that was just because they were both feeling a little drunk, too . . .

“I know damn well that you jack off, Evan Zelig,” she reminded him.

He rolled his eyes and shook his head but his grin didn’t diminish. “Well, hell, yeah! That ain’t the same thing, you know. Every man alive practices the art of Hairy Napalm, whether he wants to admit it or not—and if he says he don’t, then he’s a fucking liar, too.”

“All the same,” she went on with a fluttered hand to shut him up, “if it makes you come, you have to do it . . . Agreed?”

Rolling his eyes again, his cheesy grin fairly dripped with absolute male ego. “Yeah, yeah,” he replied with a shake of his head. “You make me cream, and I’ll return the favor for her.”

Madison laughed, casting Evan a victorious little smile as she sent the picture to his email.

A moment later, the soft chime from his computer announced that he’d received the file intact, and with a completely smug expression, he clicked on the attachment to open it.

That smile faded very slowly, much to Madison’s amusement. “Sh . . . shit,” he muttered, leaning forward to get a better view as Madison sauntered around the desk to lean on his shoulder.

She had to admit that it was a hell of a picture. Captured the moment that their lips had touched, Valerie had her hand on Madison’s cheek, her eyes closed with her long lashes fanned prettily above her slightly flushed cheek. Breasts pressed together—completely visible despite Madison’s arm that traversed the shot, she didn’t have to be brilliant to know that Evan would just assume that she had her fingers buried deep in Valerie’s business when, in reality, it was curled around the hairbrush that was just out of view. The hazy glow of light that shone through the smallest space between their lips lent an entirely erotic feel to the image—a steamy quality that Madison knew that a dog like Evan Zelig wouldn’t be able to resist.

Madison chuckled softly but didn’t deny it. Whatever he thought at the moment was fine with her, wasn’t it? Sure, he might have reservations about what she wanted him to do, but . . .

But she also knew damn well that they’d both thank her for it later. After all, she was Evan’s best friend, wasn’t she?

With a loud, longsuffering moan, his hand disappeared under the desktop. Maddy looked down in time to see him grab his cock and squeeze. She knew that stance, didn’t she? Though it’d been years since she’d last seen him do that, she knew well enough what it meant. He was trying to hold it in, literally, and as the first drips of come seeped out of him, tracing a thin, ragged trail down the head of his penis, only to disappear into the tiny seam between his fingers and his cock, she smiled, grasping his elbow and tugging hard—tugging until he let go. She laughed outright as a powerful arc of semen shot up, showering down on his stomach. Two smaller sprays followed in close order as Evan jerked and groaned and panted. “Shit . . . shit, shit, shit, shit—shit—shit—shit—shit!”

Sh e was still laughing as she sauntered off toward the bathroom to grab a wash cloth.

“Make it a fucking towel, Maddy,” he hollered in her wake.

She did as she was told, nabbing a thick, white towel off the stack on the shelf. She was even nice enough to make sure that the water was warm before she stuck one corner under the tap as her smile turned just a little catty.

Valerie groaned and rubbed her face, shivering slightly under the light blanket that didn’t offer nearly enough warmth as she stubbornly tried to ignore the incessant knocking on the door.

It didn’t work.

She heard the door open and close, followed by the distinct tapping of heels. “Aww, sweetie . . . you’re still sleeping? It’s almost five!”

Groaning as she slowly opened her eyes, Valerie blinked as Madison Cartham’s face swam in and out of focus. “I’m never drinking wine again,” Valerie pouted.

Madison laughed, mostly because Valerie always swore the same thing, and she always drank it, anyway. “You poor baby,” she crooned, sitting on the edge of the sofa. “What can I do for you?”

Valerie uttered a terse grunt as she rolled over and clutched the blanket a little closer. “You could cuddle with me. I’m freezing,” she complained.

Madison laughed and sat back, patting the sofa beside her. Valerie muttered and grumbled but scooted toward her and crawled onto the furniture, huddling beside Madison, who wrapped her arms around Valerie and smacked an obscenely loud kiss on the woman’s forehead.

“Ooh, you’re so warm,” Valerie said, her voice muffled by the blanket.

“I have my ways,” Madison drawled then giggled, waving a hand in blatant dismissal. “I told you, I gave him those pictures.”

Valerie’s brow furrowed as she considered that. “What pictures?”

Madison rolled her eyes but dug her cell phone out of her purse, taking a moment to scroll through the images still stored in memory. “These,” she said, handing over the phone for Valerie’s perusal.

“Wh . . .? Aww, Mad-dy!” she whined as she slowly scrolled through the images. “You gave him these?”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it? He’ll be as good as gold—with a couple of exceptions.”

Valerie winced, sitting up though she was careful to keep the warmth of the blanket wrapped around her as she flipped to the next image. She wasn’t completely nude in it, but she was well on her way. She grimaced and hit the ‘next’ button. “I can’t believe you—Oh, hey . . . I like this one. Send it to me.”

Madison laughed. “Okay.”

She sighed and shook her head. The next picture was a lot more compromising, and she shook her head at the sight of her own nipples displayed quite openly. “Why’d you give him these? You know, I don’t even want to think about what he was doing to himself when he looked at these . . .”

“He didn’t really do anything to himself,” Madison assured her with a grin. “But he did have a solid boner the whole time . . .”

“E-e-eww-w-w-w,” Valerie breathed, her face registering her abject disgust. “I wouldn’t have said that it was okay to give those to a pervert like him!” she complained, scrolling through images that should probably make her blush a little more than they actually did. Even the image of her tattoo didn’t actually bother her nearly as much as the idea of exactly who had seen those images did . . . “I can’t believe you’d do that to me! He’s nasty! He’s disgusting! He’s vile! He—” Cutting herself off abruptly, Valerie’s eyes widened as another groan slipped from her. “Oh, God! I did say you could, didn’t I?”

Madison nodded slowly.

Valerie sighed and shook her head as she continued to scroll through the pictures. “You know . . . as much as I hate the idea that he has them . . . these aren’t half bad . . .”

Valerie heaved another sigh. “Send them all to me,” she decided. “Still . . . ohh, I feel so dirty . . .”

Madison laughed.

Valerie paused with her finger poised above the arrow button, her eyes widening as she stared at a picture of the two of them getting ready to kiss. “Oh . . . wow . . .” she breathed. “I love this one . . .”

Madison leaned to the side to see the image that Valerie was staring at. “Hmm, yeah . . . how hot is that, right?”

“Mmm . . .” Tearing her eyes off the cell phone, Valerie wrinkled her nose. “You didn’t give him this one, did you?”

Madison laughed, the devil. “He came all over himself,” she admitted.

“O-O-Oh, ew-w-w-w,” Valerie moaned. “Disgusting! I don’t even want to think about that!”

“All over himself . . . He hasn’t done that in . . . years . . .”

Valerie didn’t look impressed, but she couldn’t help the slight twitching of her lip as she met Madison’s gaze, either. “. . . Really?”

Madison nodded, her lips twitching, too. “Really.”

Valerie was about to point out that she wasn’t too pleased with the idea that a man like Zel Roka knew what she looked like underneath her clothes when something else Madison had said popped into her head. “What do you mean, a couple of exceptions?” she demanded dubiously.

Madison waved a hand dismissively but shrugged. “I mean that he said he’d abide by your terms starting tomorrow . . . and provided that I am his . . . umm . . . call girl, so to speak.”

“What?”

Madison fluttered her hand again. “It’s not a big deal,” she assured her. “I just told him that if he should feel the need, he could call me. After all, it’s not like we don’t fuck, anyway, so it’s nothing new.”

Valerie’s mouth fell open in complete disgust. “No! He’s not going to do that to you! That nasty pig! If he thinks—”

“Relax, V. I don’t mind, really. He gives as good as he gets, you know.”

“No, Maddy! No, no, no, no, n—Why starting tomorrow?”

Madison blinked and looked completely lost for a moment, as though she wasn’t sure what Valerie was asking. Jerking suddenly—she must have gotten the question—she raised her eyebrows and laughed. “He has a date with twins tonight—identical twins, or so he says. I doubt even an offer to spend the night with his mama would come between him and his twin fetish . . .”

“Oh, absolutely not!” Valerie fumed, stumbling to her feet and kicking the bottom of the blanket out of the way as she stomped around the room. “He’s already got those pictures of me, and he wheedled that promise out of you! He doesn’t need twins, damn it, identical or not!”

“Now, now, you can’t hold this one against him,” Madison began in a placating sort of tone. “He’s always had a thing for twins. He thinks it’s hot when they go down on him.”

“That’s because he’s loathsome,” Valerie shot back. “I’m going to march right over there and tell him,” she muttered, stomping out of the living room and down the short hallway, “just as soon as I find my clothes . . .”

“It’s too late,” Madison pointed out as she trailed along in Valerie’s wake. “They’re already over at his house. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that he’d agreed to your terms.”

“Where are you going?” she demanded, sticking her head into the hallway to eye Madison cautiously.

Madison laughed as she stood up and keyed in the information to send all the pictures to Valerie’s email account. “If you really want to know, I have a date.”

“A date? With who?”

“A hopelessly boring accountant with a really tight little ass . . . He came in for a trim, and I offered to give him the ‘Madison Special’. Ta!”

“Bye,” Valerie called out, giggling despite herself. In all of one’s life, she figured that one only met a person like Madison once. She was just lucky enough to become her friend. Outrageous, maybe, and even a little misguided . . . Still, there wasn’t a thing that Madison wouldn’t do for someone she considered a friend, and while Valerie knew that her uncanny ability to attract the strangest friends—just look at her relationship with that miscreant rock star—had gotten Madison into her fair share of troubles, she also had to admit that she wouldn’t want the impetuous and impractical woman to be anything other than exactly who she was.

In fact, the idea that Madison had given Zel Roka those pictures didn’t really bother her nearly as much as the idea of what he might be doing with them, or at least, what he might be doing to himself while he was looking at them, anyway. After all, she was a modern woman, right? She absolutely believed that the human body was a beautiful thing, and she worked more than hard enough to ensure that hers was as good if not better than most models these days. She had nothing to be ashamed of. She simply didn’t like the idea of Zel Roka desecrating himself while he looked at them . . .

And Madison had asked, never mind that she’d been drunk at the time and likely would have agreed to just about anything.

‘I’m just going to march right over there and tell that pervert a thing or two,’ she told herself as she shoved her closet door open. ‘If you think that you’re getting away with this kind of crap, you’ve got another thing coming, Mister Roka . . .’

After all, her terms were clear enough, weren’t they? There wasn’t any room for his kind of negotiations, and she’d be double damned if he thought he was going to use Madison for his sick pleasure just because Madison was too sweet and kind to tell him to go fuck himself . . .

Then again . . .

Maybe she ought to see for herself, exactly what sort of mischief that deviant was getting into. What was that old saying? ‘Ah, yes: ‘know your enemy’ . . .’ she thought as she reached for a pair of sleek black pants and a black turtleneck blouse.

‘Twins, my ass . . .’

~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~ =~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~A/N:
‘Poison< /i>’ copyright Alice Cooper. Song appeared on the 1989 album, Trash.== == == == == == == == == ==
FinalThoughtfromMadison:
… He agreed …==========Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters inSubterfuge): I do not claim any rights toInuYashaor the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.